Does the consumption of ideologically congruent news on social media exacerbate polarization? I estimate the effects of social media news exposure by conducting a large field experiment randomly ...offering participants subscriptions to conservative or liberal news outlets on Facebook. I collect data on the causal chain of media effects: subscriptions to outlets, exposure to news on Facebook, visits to online news sites, and sharing of posts, as well as changes in political opinions and attitudes. Four main findings emerge. First, random variation in exposure to news on social media substantially affects the slant of news sites that individuals visit. Second, exposure to counter-attitudinal news decreases negative attitudes toward the opposing political party. Third, in contrast to the effect on attitudes, I find no evidence that the political leanings of news outlets affect political opinions. Fourth, Facebook’s algorithm is less likely to supply individuals with posts from counter-attitudinal outlets, conditional on individuals subscribing to them. Together, the results suggest that social media algorithms may limit exposure to counter-attitudinal news and thus increase polarization.
Abstract
In this article we make an argument for why thinking critically about neoliberalism is important for media and communication studies. We advance a case for a critical media analysis that ...will take seriously the affective and psychic life of neoliberalism as an increasingly central means of governing and producing people’s desires, attachments, and modes of “getting by.” To illustrate our broader theoretical argument, we will discuss the contradictory neoliberal regulation of affective dispositions for women, which prescribe confidence or alternatively, the pleasing, lighthearted readiness to “not take the self too seriously.” We make a case for expanding our theoretical and conceptual vocabulary in order to foreground the relationship between neoliberalism, media and subjectivity in the maintenance of continuing inequalities.
How can we explain the persuasiveness of populist messages, and who are most susceptible to their effects? These questions remain largely unanswered in extant research. This study argues that ...populist messages are characterized by assigning blame to elites in an emotionalized way. As previous research pointed at the guiding influence of blame attributions and emotions on political attitudes, these message characteristics may explain populism’s persuasiveness. An experiment using a national sample (N = 721) was conducted to provide insights into the effects of and mechanisms underlying populist blame attribution with regard to the European and national levels of governance. The results show that emotionalized blame attributions influence both blame perceptions and populist attitudes. Identity attachment moderates these effects: Emotionalized blame attributions have the strongest effects for citizens with weaker identity attachments. These insights allow us to understand how populist messages affect which citizens.
What types of asylum seekers are Europeans willing to accept? We conducted a conjoint experiment asking 18,000 eligible voters in 15 European countries to evaluate 180,000 profiles of asylum seekers ...that randomly varied on nine attributes. Asylum seekers who have higher employability, have more consistent asylum testimonies and severe vulnerabilities, and are Christian rather than Muslim received the greatest public support. These results suggest that public preferences over asylum seekers are shaped by sociotropic evaluations of their potential economic contributions, humanitarian concerns about the deservingness of their claims, and anti-Muslim bias. These preferences are similar across respondents of different ages, education levels, incomes, and political ideologies, as well as across the surveyed countries.This public consensus on what types of asylum seekers to accept has important implications for theory and policy.
Using new cross-country survey and experimental data, we investigate how beliefs about intergenerational mobility affect preferences for redistribution in France, Italy, Sweden, the United Kingdom, ...and the United States. Americans are more optimistic than Europeans about social mobility. Our randomized treatment shows pessimistic information about mobility and increases support for redistribution, mostly for “equality of opportunity” policies. We find strong political polarization. Left-wing respondents are more pessimistic about mobility: their preferences for redistribution are correlated with their mobility perceptions; and they support more redistribution after seeing pessimistic information. None of this is true for right-wing respondents, possibly because they see the government as a “problem” and not as the “solution.”
Conventional wisdom holds that CEOs should avoid wading into society's debates. Yet, CEOs are increasingly ignoring this dictum and taking public stances on socially contentious issues. We address ...this relatively unexplored but important phenomenon by developing a theory of CEO sociopolitical activism. Our stakeholder alignment model posits that CEO activism stems foremost from a CEO's personal values but is facilitated (or suppressed) by the CEO's expectation of support from stakeholders, particularly employees and customers. We also highlight the importance of CEO power, celebrity, and narcissism in influencing whether, and how vividly, the CEO's values manifest in activism. Then, following an episode of CEO activism, stakeholders psychologically respond to the leader's action. Those who were ex ante predisposed toward the CEO's public stance will feel pride in their affiliation with the company, and will consequently experience heightened identification with the firm and with the CEO's stance. Stakeholders who were ex ante averse to the CEO's stance will experience diminished identification with the firm, and their oppositional stance will be further cemented. Finally, we juxtapose CEO activism with other society-oriented firm practices (e.g., corporate social responsibility and corporate lobbying) and develop propositions about their independent and joint effects on stakeholder identification.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, many faculty members were required to abruptly shift from face-to-face to online teaching. Within this, some instructors managed well, while others struggled. To ...elucidate interindividual differences in online teaching and learning during this unexpected circumstance, we focus on faculty members’ attitudes towards this shift and examine their associations with underlying motivations as well as burnout/engagement and student learning. We analyzed longitudinal data of 80 faculty members’ achievement goals during the semester prior to shifting to online teaching, as well as their attitudes and burnout/engagement during the first semester with enforced online teaching. We additionally included 703 student ratings of these faculty members’ teaching quality. Results indicated that learning approach goals of faculty were positively associated with perceiving the shift to online teaching as a positive challenge and as useful for their own competence development. Conversely, performance (appearance) avoidance and work avoidance goals went along with perceiving this change as threatening, which was in turn positively related to burnout levels and negatively related to student ratings of teaching quality. Taken together, these findings point to the relevance of faculty goals and attitudes for successful online teaching and learning. (Orig.).
The Great Recession, institutional dysfunction, a growing divide between urban and rural prospects, and failed efforts to effectively address immigration have paved the way for a populist backlash ...that disrupts the postwar bargain between political elites and citizens. Whether today's populism represents a corrective to unfair and obsolete policies or a threat to liberal democracy itself remains up for debate. Yet this much is clear: these challenges indict the triumphalism that accompanied liberal democratic consolidation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. To respond to today's crisis, good leaders must strive for inclusive economic growth while addressing fraught social and cultural issues, including demographic anxiety, with frank attention. Although reforms may stem the populist tide, liberal democratic life will always leave some citizens unsatisfied. This is a permanent source of vulnerability, but liberal democracy will endure so long as citizens believe it is worth fighting for.
Die mit dem Forschenden Lernen verbundenen Verständnisse werden in der Literatur als vielfältig bewertet und die damit einhergehenden Auswirkungen als problematisch für Erforschung, ...hochschuldidaktische Umsetzung sowie Wirkungsannahmen gesehen (Huber & Reinmann, 2019). Vornehmlich in der Lehrkräftebildung entwickelte sich ein eigener Diskurs. Im vorliegenden Aufsatz wird dafür plädiert, die immer wieder benannte spezifische, berufsperspektivische Zielsetzung des Forschenden Lernens in der Lehrkräftebildung stärker theoretisch auszuformulieren, um die Verständnisklärung von Forschendem Lernen vor diesem Hintergrund vorantreiben zu können. Damit einhergehend werden aktuelle Forschungsbefunde und -erkenntnisse des Forschenden Lernens im Praxissemester in Deutschland berichtet und diskutiert. Es werden mögliche Ansatzpunkte für die theoretische Weiterentwicklung und damit verbundene Implikationen für die Praxis aufgezeigt.
Entrepreneurship education is central to student entrepreneurship. Previous research has attempted to understand the role of entrepreneurship education in the formation of students' entrepreneurial ...intention and behavior, albeit in an isolated manner. Universities can support entrepreneurship in many ways, but it is important to measure students' perception of the support that they receive in order to understand the extent of such support and its impact on students. The current study proposed and tested an integrative, multiperspective framework. We have hypothesized that the three dimensions of university support, that is, perceived educational support, concept development support, and business development support, together with institutional support, shape students' entrepreneurial self-efficacy. In turn, entrepreneurial self-efficacy and individual motivations constitute the fundamental elements of the intention to start a business. A sample of 805 university students took part in the study and data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Our findings showed that perceived educational support exerted the highest influence on entrepreneurial self-efficacy, followed by concept development support, business development support, and institutional support. Self-efficacy in turn had a significant effect on entrepreneurial intention. Individual motivations such as self-realization, recognition, and role had an additional impact on intention. However, intention was not related to financial success, innovation, and independence. The findings suggest that a holistic perspective provides a more meaningful understanding of the role of perceived university support in the formation of students' entrepreneurial intention. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
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